This invention relates to telemarketing through a hypertext network, and particularly to a system and method for providing sales and product information services to prospective and actual customers through a hypertext network.
Known telemarketing systems and methods operate utilize a telemarketing center (also called a xe2x80x9ccall centerxe2x80x9d) to provide sales and product information to purchasers. The call center is a collection of marketing agents, supervisors, and telecommunications systems located in a single geographic location. The call center is generally connected to a network (such as the public switched telephone network) to which customers are connected. The telemarketing system implements telemarketing features (e.g., call routing) and telecommunications features (e.g., call center switch management) together.
A customer wishing to make a purchase is provided with a single telephone number, generally through advertisements. Upon dialing the number, the customer is connected to specialized telemarketing telecommunications equipment that has been specially configured to route the incoming call. Some systems are provided with an automated series of announcements that solicit additional information from the customer, which the customer provides by selecting options by pressing the appropriate button on his telephone touch pad. Other systems accept simple voice responses. This additional information is used by the telemarketing telecommunications equipment to decide how to route the call.
A call may be routed to an appropriate agent, to a queue if all appropriate agents are busy, or to a voicemail system on which the customer may leave a message. An appropriate agent is selected to receive an incoming call on any of a host of parameters, including particular agent skills, customer priority, customer responses to an automated inquiry system, time-of-day, and queue sizes.
Known systems are also able to initiate a call from an agent to a customer. This is commonly used in solicitations for bank credit cards, charitable contributions, and magazine subscriptions. The systems provide extensive call data recording, analysis, and reporting capabilities, as well as call-monitoring by supervisors. Call data may include such parameters as mean time spent per call, queuing delays, the number of incoming and/or outgoing calls, and agent workload.
These features are implemented using special software and hardware that is customized to accommodate the particular needs of each telemarketing call center. One vendor""s hardware and software is rarely compatible with that of another. Thus, one vendor""s component which may be best suited for a particular application may not operate with other call center components made by other vendors. The need to specially configure a substantial amount of software and hardware for each telemarketing center adds significantly to the cost of implementing known telemarketing systems.
Another disadvantage of known telemarketing systems in which the call is initiated by the customer is that the call is queued if all agents are busy. While the call is queued, the customer is on hold until one of the agents becomes available. The telemarketer or customer must pay for the connection and for any announcement provided to the waiting customer, in addition to any actual conversation time. It would be advantageous to delay establishing a connection at all until an agent is actually available.
Because known telemarketing systems implement telemarketing and telecommunications features together, such systems are usually large and complex. Telemarketing software must be customized and often comprises millions of lines of source code, and is expensive and time consuming to modify or enhance. Telemarketing hardware must be specially configured for each application, resulting in a hardware system that is inflexible and expensive to change. A better system would implement telemarketing functions separately from the underlying telecommunications functions. In that case, a required change in the telemarketing logic could be effectuated more easily because it would not directly involve the telecommunications control software. Further, the telemarketing functions would be portable among a variety of hardware platforms, which could be utilized to best and most economically support the objectives of the telemarketer.
It should further be noted that telemarketing functions supported by various call center vendors differ from vendor to vendor. Thus, a telemarketer with more than one call center may be unable to offer the same telemarketing functionality from one call center to anther, limiting the possibility of resource sharing. For example, is a first call center is exceptionally busy, it may not be possible to divert the overflow to a second call center because the second call center is implemented with products from another vendor, or else is implemented with products from the same vendor that are configured differently. This problem could also arise if the architectures of calling centers are different. For instance, a first call center with agents connected by local area network may not be easily reconfigured to handle calls normally taken by a second call center whose agents are connected directly to a call center switch on the premises. A better system would provide call center functionality regardless of the location and connectivity of diverse agent resources. This could be achieved by properly separating telemarketing functions from telecommunications functions.
Further, by separating telemarketing functionality from specific underlying telecommunications technology, telemarketing architects would be able to offer a uniform set of agent, customer, and supervisor interfaces that operate with switching equipment from multiple vendors which has been integrated to provide optimal telecommunications for the telemarketing application.
Implementing the customer interface through a hypertext network would be another improvement over known systems that require a customer to respond to a tedious set of questions by entering responses on the customer""s telephone touch pad. Product information is also much more easily presented to the customer through a hypertext network, especially one which can handle multimedia information, including text, graphic, audio, video and animation media.
Known systems implement certain telemarketing functions through a hypertext network. However, these systems utilize the hypertext network only outside of the call center. For example, in one known system, a customer requests a telephone connection to a sales agent at a traditional call center by selecting a feature on a hypertext page transmitted to the customer over the Internet. However, the architecture of the call center itself, with its centralized, customized hardware and software, remain the same as known systems. A better system would provide the advantages of hypertext networking to telemarketing, thus revolutionizing the call center by freeing it from having to exist at a single geographic location, profoundly reducing the necessity for custom-designed hardware and software, and providing the first truly portable telemarketing system that can operate easily from platform to platform and from network to network.
The present invention implements telemarketing functions over a hypertext network independently from media transport functions, resulting in more portable, flexible, and efficient telemarketing system than hither to known. In accordance with the present invention, a telemarketing server system, agents, supervisors and customers are interconnected on a hypertext network. A hypertext network is a network capable of carrying hypertext information between nodes. An example of a hypertext network is the Internet, on which is implemented the World Wide Web, an interconnected set of geographically dispersed websites comprised of related hypertext files.
The telemarketing server system (TSS) comprises at least one computer that accepts and transmits hypertext information through the hypertext network. The TSS accepts a request for telemarketing services from a customer. The customer makes the request generally by selecting an item on a hypertext page displayed to the customer through a browser.
Upon receiving the request, the TSS routes the request to an appropriate agent through the hypertext network if such an appropriate agent is available. otherwise, the TSS routes the request to a queue, where it waits until an appropriate agent is available. The TSS assigns a priority to each request in a queue, and may assign each request to more than one queue. A request is routed to an agent from a queue in priority order when the agent becomes available.
When an agent becomes available, the agent may respond to the customer request immediately, or else carry out research or other activities and respond to the request at a later time. In one embodiment of the present invention, the agent responds to the customer request by placing a telephone call to the customer. In another embodiment, the customer is notified through the hypertext network that the agent is available an initiates a telephone call to the agent.
Each agent and customer has a telecommunications address that is used in establishing communications. This telecommunications address is a network address for a packet voice embodiment of the present invention, and a telephone number for an embodiment wherein communications are established over the public switched telephone network.
The scheduling of communications between the customer and agent is carried out in one embodiment by exchanges of messages between the customer and agent over the data network. In another embodiment, the scheduling is carried out using voicemail messages delivered over the public switched telephone network.
When a request is routed to an agent, the agent is provided with a hypertext agent page through the hypertext network. This agent page identifies the product in which the customer has expressed an interest. In one embodiment of the present invention, the agent page also comprises customer profile information, including the customer""s credit rating, age, and buying patterns. The customer and agent exchange information over the public switched telephone network and/or over the hypertext network through customer hypertext pages that solicit customer information and provide further product information to the customer and/or through a regular telephonic or videotelephone connection. The agent completes an order through the agent page at the customer""s request by which the product is purchased and sent to the customer.
The method of establishing communications between an agent and customer in accordance with the present invention is far more cost-effective and efficient than known systems because telecommunications resources are used only when both the customer and the agent are available. The present invention eliminates the costly process of placing a customer or agent on xe2x80x9choldxe2x80x9d during a call while one or the other is busy, and advantageously provides the means for scheduling communications between customer and agent at a time of mutual convenience.
The TSS tracks the status of agents, queues, telemarketing requests and system performance in at least one database. Such information is available to a supervisor at the supervisor""s request through the hypertext network. This information is presented to the supervisor as a supervisor hypertext page. In one embodiment, a supervisor makes manual adjustments to the system through the supervisor page. For example, the supervisor transfers a telemarketing request from one queue to another in a drag and drop operation.
The need to have agents and supervisors at a single geographic location is advantageously eliminated by the present invention by centralizing telemarketing control in the TSS and interconnecting the TSS, customers, agents and supervisors through a hypertext network. This introduces a new level of flexibility and efficiency in using human resources in low-cost areas to serve as agents and supervisors. Indeed, in one embodiment, the present invention enables an individual with nothing more than a personal computer, a browser, and a telephone to serve as an agent or supervisor, doing away with the expensive customized switches, special software, and office space required by known systems.
The present invention further reduces the complexity of telemarketing hardware and software. Software for the present invention only implements telemarketing functions, and can interface across various media transport hardware and software. Hence, it is smaller and easier to modify than known telemarketing software packages.
Further, commercially available, off-the-shelf software may be used to develop and maintain the software of the present invention because it is implemented on a hypertext network, for which an extensive and growing set of generic development tools and programs already exists. This is far less expensive and more flexible than the custom software development required by known systems.
The present invention provides a system and method for providing telemarketing services that is more portable over different transport media platforms, makes more efficient use of telecommunications resources, is easier and less expensive to develop, operate, maintain and modify than known systems. In accordance with the present invention, the customer is more effectively and efficiently provided with more capable telemarketing services.